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Saturday, 15 November 2014

Darklight On.... With Jess Anastasi

A Sci-fi Evolution

Someone asked me a while back how I came to
love science-fiction so much, and why I decided to write sci-fi romance. It might seem
silly, but my answer in the moment was actually "I don't know" because
I'd never really sat down and thought about it, probably due to the fact that
the evolution of my tastes had developed over such a long period of time. It kind
of bugged me that I really didn't know why I liked sci-fi, or how I'd
come to a place where I felt I could write it.

I thought back, and realized that my love
of speculative fiction had been developing from a very young age, and the
reality of this had never occurred to me before.

The first sci-fi show I can ever remember
watching was SeaQuest. I was only about twelve, and my parents were starting to
let me watch a few more "grown-up" shows.

After only one or two episodes
of SeaQuest, I was hooked, and waited every week for (I think it was) Friday
night to roll around so I could see another episode. To this day, I have no
idea why, but I was just blown away by this futuristic concept and loved every
second of it.

And I'll admit, my first TV-crush was on
Lucas, played by Jonathan Brandis--a young teen on the ship's crew. My memory
fails me now, but I think he might have been super-intelligent or something. But I do remember he spent a lot of time hanging out with a dolphin. What
twelve year old wouldn't want a dolphin for a pet?

It was around this time I was also becoming
interested in keeping a journal and scraps of writing. Though I've never
admitted it to anyone before, I actually wrote a few little stories, scripting
myself into the show, doing all sorts of dramatic things like rescuing that
dolphin and (gasp!) holding hands with Lucas. Fanfiction in its earliest form,
though it didn't occur to me until recently that fanfiction was exactly what I
was doing.

After SeaQuest finished, I got into the
X-Files in a big way, and that lasted well into my late teens, when I also fell
in love with Buffy and Angel. Buffy's character was the same age as me while I
was in high school, so it was like we were growing up together. And while I
couldn't relate to killing demons and vampires, hanging out in cemeteries, or
having a broody, mysterious, older (much older) boyfriend like Angel, I still
felt like I could relate to other teenager angsty issues.

After Buffy, there was a bit of a lull. But
then my now sister-in-law introduced me to Stargate SG1, and I could no longer
deny my geeky side. I loved it. Like absolutely thought it was the most
brilliant TV I had ever seen. Everything about it sucked me in; the aliens,
visiting other planets, the team dynamics, the forbidden romance between Sam and
Jack, the bromance between Jack and Daniel, the awesome way Teal'c delivered those deadpan one liners, not to mention
the sexy geek that was Daniel Jackson. Yep, SG1 made nerds look cool, at least
I thought so.

My love of SG1 created a ripple
effect. The more I loved it, the more I wanted. Yeah, they brought out Stargate
Atlantis, and it was great in its own way, but I wanted something else. I
branched out in all directions, reading what little sci-fi romance I could get
my hands on, like Linnea Sinclair and Ann Aguirre. I discovered Farscape, and
the epic romantic story of John and Aeryn, who I still say had the best TV love-interest
arc out of any couple on any show ever, not just a sci-fi series. And then I
went darker, getting into the mind-twisting shadows of Battlestar Galactica.

Finally, I sat down and watched Joss
Whendon's Firefly and Serenity. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say my
life was changed forever. Something about Whedon's Firefly universe was beyond
my ability to articulate its brilliance. I am one of those people who forever
complain that it was axed before it had a chance to shine, and we missed out on
something that could have been generationally epic if it had been given three
or four seasons to play out. But it wasn't to be, and maybe part of Firefly's
cult status is because it became so popular after the fact. Don't quote me, but
I think DVD sales far outsold the expectations based on the show's ratings.

So after I had watched and read everything
that had caught my sci-fi interest, I found myself at a bit of a loss, and
couldn't find anything else to consume that satisfied me in the way some of the
books and TV shows previously had.

For a long while, I'd had this sci-fi idea
floating around in the back of my mind, and although I read and watched plenty of
sci-fi, I had this belief that sci-fi was something smart people wrote. I didn't mean that in the sense that I'm not
smart, I think I have a decent level of intelligence and had applied myself to
become a writer by this stage. But I thought a sci-fi author need to have like
an IQ of one-hundred-and-twenty, or something ridiculous, to pull off writing
all that technical stuff that I didn't understand.

I actually don't remember what made me
decide I was finally going to sit down and write this book. I think it was
possibly just that the idea wouldn't leave me alone, until I finally thought "what
the heck, I'll just give it a try."

I do clearly remember sitting down and
opening the file to begin, wondering how much of a spectacular failure this was
going to be. But the words came, and then kept coming, flowing in a way they
never had before in any other book I'd ever written. I had that book finished
in a matter of seven or eight weeks, all ninety-five thousand words of rough
first draft. I'd really done it, and I'd felt connected to this universe and
characters with amazing depth. That book was Atrophy (coming out with Entangled Publishing at some point in the near
future) and its path to publication was a long and arduous one, but that's an
entire other blog post.

A while after I'd written Atrophy, I decided I wanted to try my
hand at a military sci-fi romance, and Escape
Velocity was born. It started out life as a simple novella, but through a
series of recent events, blossomed into a full length novel.

Sometimes it still surprises me just how
sci-fi my writing career has gone. If someone had of told me ten years ago that
this is what I'd be writing today, I would never have believed them!

These days I watch shows like Intelligence and
Almost Human (unfortunately both cancelled after only one season) The 100 (just
returned for season 2) and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, because I think Joss
Whedon is pretty much the master of the writing universe. And fortunately,
there's now more sci-fi romance books on the market than ever before—more than I can
keep up with considering I don't have as much reading time as I used to.

I've found myself in my element, and no
longer deny my total sc-fi geekiness.

To get through the pain and torture
inflicted on him as a POW, Commander Kai Yang relied on memories of Sacha, his
shipmate and the girl he grew up with, to survive. He escapes and returns to
his battleship, the Valiant Knox, to
discover he'd been declared dead, and a widowed Sacha had been married to his
best friend. Desperate to be the man she needs, Kai must overcome both his
struggle with PTSD and guilt over loving his best friend's widow.

Sacha Dalton can't believe Kai is alive. She'd mourned him as deeply as the
loss of her husband, but Kai's death revealed feelings she'd never known she'd
had. However, Kai might think he's falling for her, but she's convinced he's
using her as a crutch to avoid confronting his survivor's guilt. Until he's
healed, she'll have to keep her distance.

And, as a doctor, Sacha knows all too well many soldiers never recover.

Jess has been making up stories ever since
she can remember. Though her messy handwriting made it hard for anyone else to
read them, she wasn't deterred and now she gets to make up stories for a
living. She loves loud music, a good book on a rainy day, and probably spends
too much time watching too many TV shows. Jess lives in regional Victoria, Australia with her very supportive husband, three daughters, one ball-obsessed border
collie, and one cat who thinks he's one of the kids.